Habsburg

“ Yet, in spite of internal 792 dissensions arising out of questions fundamentally insoluble, and in spite of the constant threat of external complications that may lead to war, the Habsburg monarchy as the result of the changes in the 19th and 20th centuries is seemingly stronger than ever. The shadow of universal claims to empire and sonorous but empty titles have vanished, but so have the manifold rivalries and entanglements which accompanied the Habsburg rule in Italy and the Netherlands and Habsburg preponderance in Germany. The monarchy is stronger because its sphere is more defined ”

“ He was to be as absolute as he could in the Empire at large, but while he controlled the national government, the national government was to have no control over his hereditary lands. It mattered little how much the imperial authority diminished provided the Habsburg power grew; no one should henceforth be Emperor unless he came of the Habsburg race. ”

“ By the laws of 1723, which gave effect to the resolution of the diet in favour of accepting the principle of female succession, the Habsburg king entered into a fresh contract with his Hungarian subjects, a contract which remained the basis of the relations of the crown and nation until 1848. On the one hand it was declared that the kingdom of Hungary was an integral part of the Habsburg dominions and inseparable from these so long as a male or female heir of the kings Charles, Joseph and Leopold should be found to succeed to them. ”

“ As the object of the Habsburgs was to join the Waldstätten to their Austrian possessions, their policy was naturally to oppose the freedom of the district. It was a fact highly favourable to Swiss interests that the German monarchy was elective; for the princes and prince-electors, with their personal and selfish aims, shut out the mighty Habsburg dynasty, whenever candidates presented themselves whom they considered more likely to favour their views. ”

“ In ancient statutes signify armor, harness, utensils, etc., without which it is supposed there can be no ability to maintain a war.
Habsburg, or Hapsburg, House of. An ancient sovereign family of Austria, which derives its name from the castle of Habsburg, in Switzerland. The first member of the family who acquired great celebrity was Rudolph of Habsburg, born in 1218, and elected emperor in 1273. He obtained Austria and other provinces by conquest, and founded the dynasty which now reigns over the Austrian empire, and which, since 1736, has been styled the house of Habsburg-Lorraine. ”

“ The secret of whatever success he attained in his long reign lay in his own devotion to the idea to which he pitilessly sacrificed others—the idea of the divine nature of the Habsburg dynasty and of the divine mission of its head. ”

“ If the Austrians have a passion for Prussian "kultur," it is not for us to restrain it. Austrian, Saxon, Bavarian, Hanoverian and Prussian must adjust their own differences. Hungary would be naturally Habsburg; is, in fact, now essentially Habsburg, more Habsburg than Austria, and essentially anti-Slav. ”

“ When the Spanish branch of the house of Habsburg became extinct in 1700, he was put forward as the lawful heir in opposition to Philip V., the Bourbon to whom the Spanish dominions had been left by the will of Charles II. of Spain. He was proclaimed at Vienna on the 19th of September 1703, and made his way to Spain by the Low Countries, England and Lisbon, remaining in Spain till 1711, mostly in Catalonia, where the Habsburg party was strong. ”

“ A large proportion of the Habsburg hereditary lands, including Tyrol and the scattered Swabian estates, were ruled by a rival branch of the ruling house represented by the Archduke Sigismund, while Austria itself fell into the hands of Matthias Corvinus. Yet in his cautious and slow-minded fashion Frederick was by no means lacking in ability and foresight. If he were indifferent to the Empire, he looked beyond the present distress of his house to a time when politic marriages and cunningly devised treaties of eventual succession would make Austria a real ruler of the world. ”

“ His vast estates were not confiscated by the Austrian Government, and he was allowed to remain in the dominions of the House of Habsburg. He was even tacitly, though by no means officially, granted yet further privileges; he was allowed to afford at least temporary shelter to some of the clergymen of his Church, whom one of the first decrees of the victors had expelled from Bohemia. ”

“ With the princes was almost invariably allied any European monarch who had anything to gain from dividing Germany or weakening Habsburg influence. In case of a civil war, the Habsburgs might reasonably expect to find enemies in Denmark, Sweden, and France. ”

“ Maximilian has been called the second founder of the house of Habsburg, and certainly by bringing about marriages between Charles and Joanna and between his grandson Ferdinand and Anna, daughter of Ladislaus, king of Hungary and Bohemia, he paved the way for the vast empire of Charles V. and for the influence of the Habsburgs in eastern Europe. But he had many qualities less desirable. He was reckless and unstable, resorting often to lying and deceit, and never pausing to count the cost of an enterprise or troubling to adapt means to ends. ”

“ Austrian culture, in their opinion, is so different from that of the new States that you cannot compare them. And when they talk of the Habsburg dynasty it is after the fashion of old Francis Joseph who, in 1891, when the four hundredth anniversary of the great Czech teacher Comenius was being officially celebrated in all the schools of Prussia, commanded that nothing of the sort was to be done in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, because his attention had been drawn by Archbishop Schwarzenberg of Prague to a Latin letter in which the great man uttered some sharp words concerning the dynasty. ”

“ But the shadow of the Holy Empire, immemorially associated with the house of Habsburg, still darkened the counsels of German statesmen. The Austrian archduke John had been appointed regent, pending the election of an emperor; and the political leaders could neither break loose from the tradition of Austrian hegemony, nor reconcile themselves with the idea of a mutilated Germany, till it was too late, and Austria was once more in a position to re-establish the system devised by her diplomacy at the congress of Vienna. ”

“ It had, moreover, by the compact with Hungary of 1867, ceased even fully to represent the relation of the emperor to all his dominions; and the title which had been devised to cover the whole of the Habsburg monarchy sank into the official style of the sovereign of but a half; while even within the Austrian empire proper it is resented by those peoples which, like the Bohemians, wish to obtain the same recognition of their national independence as was conceded to Hungary. ”

“ But neither can Austria tolerate the normal independent development of Servia or profit from it by normal commercial relations. For the Habsburg monarchy is not the political expression of a capitalist state, but a loose syndicate of a few parasitic cliques, striving to grasp everything within reach, utilizing the political powers of the nation so long as this weak edifice still stands. ”

“ According to this forecast, Germany, in addition to the colonies which she would gain in every part of the world, chiefly at the expense of France, would build up a great empire in Central Europe extending even as far as the Persian Gulf. Austria would become part of that empire, whereas Hungary would form the nucleus of a new Habsburg Empire consisting, among other states, of Poland, Serbia (the latter being enlarged by the addition of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Slavonia and the south of Dalmatia) and Bulgaria. This Habsburg Empire would be open to still further extension in the future. ”

“ That there have never been any unfavourable comments is more, of course, than can truthfully be said. Rebellious members of the House of Habsburg, anxious to go their own amorous ways without reference to the Habsburg rules, have sometimes felt that the state of the affections of the head of the house gave them a handle, and have sometimes pulled that handle. ”

“ Here is one from the celebrated oath of the Rüti, in 1307: ‘Every man must protect the innocent and oppressed people in his valley, and preserve to them their old rights and freedom. On the other hand, we do not wish to deprive the Counts of Habsburg of the smallest portion of their property, of their rights, or of their vassals. ”

“ The ecclesiastical organization of Austria was imperfect, so long as there was no archbishopric within its borders, and its clergy owed allegiance to foreign prelates. The work of unification which was so successfully accomplished by Maximilian was aided by two events, the progress of the Turks in south-eastern Europe, and the loss of most of the Habsburg possessions on the Rhine. The first tended to draw the separate states together for purposes of defence, and the second turned the attention of the Habsburgs to the possibilities of expansion in eastern Europe. ”

“ It is said that when the late Emperor of Austria, the good and kind-hearted Francis II., was shown the ruins of the little castle of Habsburg, which is still to be seen crowning a low height, in the canton of Aarraw, Switzerland, he observed, "I now see that we have not always been a great family." ”

“ Nothing can give one so good an idea of the extent of the family power of Habsburg on all sides of Uri, Schwiz and Unterwalden, as the roll of the estates, the so-called Urbarbuch, in which were recorded the lists of properties and offices with the revenues appertaining to them. An examination of this terrier, which was begun by Rudolf and finished by his son Albrecht, shows conclusively that the Forest States were surrounded by a veritable cordon of Habsburg estates, and that nothing but a determined effort on their part could save them from becoming completely owned by that ambitious family. ”

“ The empire of Austria, as the official designation of the The title "Emperor of Austria." territories ruled by the Habsburg monarchy, dates back only to 1804, when Francis II., the last of the Holy Roman emperors, proclaimed himself emperor of Austria as Francis I. His motive in doing so was to guard against the great house of Habsburg being relegated to a position inferior to the parvenus Bonapartes, in the event of the final collapse of the Holy Roman Empire, or of the possible election of Napoleon as his own successor on the throne of Charlemagne. ”

“ On the death of Ferdinand in 1516 the Archduke Charles succeeded by hereditary right to the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon and their dependencies, to the kingdoms of the two Sicilies, to the Franche-Comté of Burgundy, and to the provinces of the Netherlands. On the death of Maximilian in 1519, he added to these the Habsburg inheritance in eastern Europe, which he wisely resigned before long to his brother Ferdinand. For soldiers he could rely on his Spanish dominions, on the regular forces organised by Charles the Bold in the Netherlands, on the less trustworthy levies of Germany and Italy. ”

“ The world knows the history of our struggle against the Habsburg oppression, intensified and systematized by the Austro-Hungarian Dualistic Compromise of 1867. This dualism is only a shameless organization of brute force and exploitation of the majority by the minority ”

“ Apparently, indeed, it is only as a linguist and a figure-head—the sublime figure-head of the Habsburgs who need a figure-head so badly—that he possesses genius; in other respects he seems to have been, as Herr Wulfling was, at a later date, to the Princess Louisa of Tuscany, “a very ordinary man.” In any case, he proved himself a very ordinary general, whom very ordinary generals were able to defeat—partly, perhaps, because his Hungarian soldiers showed great alacrity in deserting him; but he sulked, with characteristic Habsburg sullenness, over the terms of peace. ”

“ Austria is not one of the “inevitable” countries, like England and Spain, bound to have a separate existence under some form of government or other because of their geographical situation and the national characteristics of their inhabitants. There is no Austrian nation: only a medley of races which detest each other, bound (but by no means welded) together for the supposed convenience of the rest of Europe, and unified only by the fact that its component parts all appertain to the dominions of the House of Habsburg. ”

“ He therefore took counsel merely with his interest as a temporal prince, threw in his lot with France, supported the duke of Nevers in the Mantuan Succession, and, under stress of fear of Habsburg supremacy, suffered himself to be drawn into closer relations with the Protestants than beseemed his office, and incurred the reproach of rejoicing in the victories of heretics. ”

“ Though the power of the strongest of the German princes was thus limited, yet it was in regions under the influence of such great feudatories that the nearest approach to order prevailed. Habsburg rule in the south-east, Burgundian rule in the north-west, were establishing settled States, though rather at the expense of Germany as a whole than by way of contributing to its general peace. In a similar fashion Bavaria and the north-eastern Marchland between Elbe and Oder attained comparative prosperity under Wittelsbachs, Wettins, and Hohenzollerns. ”